A.J.P. Taylor, the famous left-wing English historian, wrote in his book, English History 1914-45, that “until August 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.

“He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14 or rather less than eight per cent of the national income.”

As entertaining as it would be to leave the impression that I spend my leisure time reading the decades-old works of long-dead historians, I can’t take credit for finding the quote; that belongs to Peter Oborne, the chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph in London, who used it in a column in July.

When I read it at the time I thought three things: a) Boy, how times have changed; b) I bet the average Canadian in 1914, lucky so-and-so, had even less contact with government, and; c) How much do you get paid to be chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph?

Oborne, who I presume knows the answer to c) and isn’t saying, focused

on a) in his column, an obituary for Kenneth Minogue, the neo-liberal Australian political theorist and longtime professor at the London School of Economics. (Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of him either.)

Carrying on Taylor’s point, although from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Oborne noted that “today, there is literally no area of life, ranging from the family to our private conversations, where the state (partly thanks to new, powerfully intrusive methods of government surveillance) does not believe that it has a role. It shapes our lives from above, tells us what we should think and constantly seeks ever greater powers to regulate our behaviour.”

He was speaking about jolly old England but, uh, sound familiar?

The long, rapidly expanding list of intrusive actions by governments, as experience by people in B.C., is almost impossible to keep up with: the endless list of proposed new taxes on citizens who already feel broke and overtaxed; smart meters, no need to say more; the endless push for density in Vancouver to accommodate a million more people in the region without asking if the current population even wants to invite them to move in; tolls on bridges; and almost anything shoved down the throats of Vancouver residents by Vision, who claim to love Vancouver but apparently hate Vancouverites.

Even Port Metro Vancouver is getting in on the act, saying last week that it is going after “nuisance and derelict” vessels moored in Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River. I understand and support removing derelict vessels but the so-called “nuisance” vessels are usually lived on or regularly used by citizens who can’t afford the ridiculous fees at marinas. All they’re doing is anchoring in a harbour, generally out of the way of traffic, which is what harbours were supposed to be for until bureaucrats began writing regulations that allow them to inflict themselves on poor seafaring souls, usually with trumped-up reasons linked to safety or the environment.

A.J.P. Taylor’s Englishman of 1914, or a Canadian of the same vintage, would be shocked if transported to 2013 with how many ways government intrudes into the lives of citizens, taxing their transportation choices and telling them which light bulbs to use. The list is long.

Of course, not all government is bad. Socialized medicine isn’t something I want to do without and I’m certain those 1914 citizens would be very pleased to have. But it seems that we’ve reached some sort of tipping point where a lot of people are pushing back at the state for sticking its nose into our business with new regulations, fees and taxes. Most people actually want to be left alone and what’s wrong with that?

People in the “freemen on the land” movement are clearly various kinds of nuts, but perhaps they are the classic canaries in the coal mine — more sensitive citizens who just can’t take endless government interference anymore.

How long until we’re all not taping strange documents written in Latin to our windshields and telling cops that they have no authority to give us tickets? Not long, is my guess.

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